Rotations on a lightcone in Minkowski 3-space (Q1695178): Difference between revisions

Consider a nondegenerate symmetric bilinear form on \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\) \[ B=\begin{pmatrix} -a_1 & 0 & 0\\ 0 & a_2 & 0\\ 0 & 0 & a_3 \end{pmatrix} \] with \(a_1,a_2,a_3 \in \mathbb{R}^+\). The ``geometry'' it imposes on \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\) is used in modern theoretical physics, with the first axis representing ``time'' and the two other axes representing ``space''. Under this geometry, there exist vectors of positive length, called ``space-like'' vectors, vectors of negative length, called ``time-like'' vectors, and vectors of length zero, called ``null'' vectors. The null vectors form a cone, called ``the cone of light''. The goal of this paper is to formulate the rotations fixing a given null vector. Such rotations also fix the subspace perpendicular to that null vector. Suppose \(u\) is a null vector, and let \(v\) and \(w\) be vectors satisfying \[ B(u,u)=B(v,v)=B(w,u)=B(w,v)=0, \, B(u,v)=B(w,w)=1. \] The subspace perpendicular to \(u\) is spanned by \(u\) and \(w\). Rotations fixing \(u\) can thus be parameterized by \[ u \rightarrow u, \,w \rightarrow w+\theta u, \,v \rightarrow v-\theta w-\frac{1}{2}\theta^2 u \] for some given \(\theta \in \mathbb{R}\), called the ``angle'' by which we rotate. The authors provide three different formulations of rotations about null vectors by given angles: (1) using Rodrigues' formula, (2) using Cayley's formula, and (3) using hyperbolic split quaternions.